When The Workplace Is A Woke Place: Jennifer Sey on Corporate Branding Versus Personal Beliefs

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2022

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jennifer Sey spent more than twenty years at Levis Strauss and Company, rising through the ranks to Chief Marketing Office and then Global Brand President. In 2020, she was in line to become CEO of the company when the Covid pandemic hit and she found herself working from home with four kids out out school. Soon, she became frustrated by school closures and puzzled about lockdown polices for kids in general. And she started speaking up about it. This did not sit well Levis and Jennifer was eventually forced out of the company — and offered a million dollar severance package in exchange for singing a non-disclosure agreement. But Jennifer was so committed to speaking out that she turned down the deal. In this interview, Jennifer and Meghan talk about how social media has blurred the lines between professional comportment and personal beliefs. They ask what it means when corporations take public political stances, how to tell a genuine expression of company values from virtue signaling, and whether corporate wokeness actually helps sell products. They also discuss Jennifer's career as an an elite gymnast and how her decision to come forward about abuses in USA gymnastics paved the way for her current activism around kids and covid policy.

Guest Bio:

Jennifer Sey spent close to 23 years at Levi Strauss & Company, holding a variety of leadership positions, including Global Brand President. She was first woman to hold that post. She is also a former elite gymnast and was the U.S. National all-around champion in 1986. In 2008, she released a memoir, Chalked Up, about her life in gymnastics and she is also the producer of the Emmy award-winning documentary Athlete A, about abuses within competitive gymnastics, including the sexual abuses of hundreds of young gymnasts committed by team doctor Larry Nassar.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Business used to be the purview of the right, right?
0:06.5	We looked at business leaders as, you know, evil, greedy Republicans who didn't want to be regulated.
0:15.3	And now, really, if we're honest, the businesses that hold the most influence and sway are the purview of the left.
0:22.4	Tech companies are the purview of the left. And so there's been this complete upending or
0:28.2	reversal. And I think a lot of companies are filled with young left people. And I think that
0:36.3	leaders are anxious to satisfy the employee population and they
0:40.5	apply a lot of pressure. They're not shy. And I think companies are eager to prove that they're not like
0:46.5	the oil companies of the past. Like we are business with a kinder face, you know, and we are
0:54.0	business that cares. And so I think they're
0:57.3	really eager to tout their, you know, well, credentials. And it all seems to make sense when
1:05.7	you're like in this loop, this closed loop of people who want to do the same. And you don't realize how it's going to
1:12.0	read or it's going to land. And you do a Pepsi commercial that's so stupid that it seems
1:18.3	just sort of amazing that anybody would have thought that was ever a good idea.
1:26.7	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. My guest, Jennifer Say, is a little different from a lot of the guests we have on this show. She's not an artist or a journalist or a podcaster. She's in the corporate world. Or at least she was in the corporate world until her employer, Levi-Strauss and
1:45.4	company, pushed her out after more than 20 years at the company, including more than seven as
1:50.7	chief marketing officer and then brand president. Jen was in line to become CEO of Levi's,
1:56.8	but when the COVID pandemic hit, she found herself working from her San Francisco apartment with her four children at home.
2:04.0	The youngest two were in preschool, one was in high school, and the oldest came home from college.
2:09.3	At that point, she became frustrated by school closures and puzzled about lockdown policies for kids in general.
2:16.0	And then she began speaking up about it. This did not sit well
2:19.7	with Levi's, and she was warned repeatedly to tone things down. We're going to hear the whole story
2:25.5	from Jen, but suffice it to say, she left the company earlier this year, but remained so committed
	...

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